---
hide_title: true
title: 'EntityReferenceExtension'
---

import Highlights from '../../website/extension-examples/extension-entity-reference/highlights';

# `EntityReferenceExtension`

## Summary

This extension allows to reference external entities in the content of your editor.

### Use cases

This extension enables use cases like:

- **Comment** content in the editor: A piece of text points to a comment (external entity).
- **Highlight** content: A piece of text points to a highlight (external entity), which can have shared meta data like color, tags, etc.

### Comparision to similar extensions

There are multiple Remirror extensions that serve similar use cases. Here is an overview when to use which:

- [`TextHighlightExtension`](./text-highlight-extension): Suitable for simple highlighting of text with a color
- [`EntityReferenceExtension`](./entity-reference-extension): Use when the marked text has meta data, e.g. the text of a comment or tags assigned to highlighted text
- [`AnnotationExtension`](./annotation-extension): Generally avoid using annotations, and use instead `EntityReferenceExtension`. See this [blog post](/blog/annotation-issues) for an in-depth discussion of issues with annotations.

## Usage

### Installation

This extension is installed for you when you install the main `remirror` package.

You can use the imports in the following way:

```ts
import { EntityReferenceExtension } from 'remirror/extensions';
```

The extension is provided by the `@remirror/extension-entity-reference` package.

### Examples

<Highlights />

## API

- [EntityReferenceExtension](../api/extension-entity-reference)
